


146. burning skies

by piggy09



Series: The Sestre Daily Drabble Project [183]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-30
Updated: 2016-12-30
Packaged: 2018-09-13 09:05:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9116368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: Everyone knows that people touched by fire are dangerous. They don’t know how to touch people without burning them. You can’t trust people like that.





	

You can always tell the fire-touched – not just by the way that they skulk through the citystreets, eyes hollow and dark, but by the way that flame-trails snake over their necks and around their wrists. Red, orange, red. The markings would be beautiful, in any other circumstance – like painted marks, like tiger stripes. But everyone knows that people touched by fire are dangerous. They don’t know how to touch people without burning them. You can’t trust people like that.

Sarah’s lucky: her own markings coil around her breasts and stomach, easy enough to hide. She can join in with everyone else – jeering, mocking, laughing when the rain falls again and the fire-touched have to hide in doorways. She scoffs with her hands folded over her stomach. Under her shirt: the hiss of steam, almost quiet enough to be ignored.

Tonight she isn’t ignoring it. She’s heading deeper into the city, belly aching with fire – it’s shivering through her ribcage and into her shoulders, arms, wrists. One flick of her hands and she could ignite but she can’t, not yet. She’s meeting someone.

In a grubby little square blocked on three ends by high walls, the fire-touched is waiting for her. Sarah never asked her name, but she got it anyways: Helena. (No last name.) Right now Helena is sitting against a wall, watching dispassionately as feathers of flame curl off her fingertips. They drift to the ground and go out. Helena’s wearing a tanktop, even though it’s winter; you can see the flame-trails curling over her back, red like old scars. They go onto her shoulders and all the way to her upper arms. Sarah doesn’t understand why you wouldn’t hide them. She has absolutely no idea why Helena doesn’t hide.

“You’re back,” Helena says, and a bird explodes to life between her palms. It flies into the air and curls in on itself and goes out. Helena watches her with empty eyes, ringed by exhausted hollows.

“Yeah,” Sarah says uncomfortably. She drops her backpack to the ground and pulls out a loaf of bread, a jar of peanut butter. Helena practically sprints over to her to grab it. It’s impossible to know the last time she ate. With that tanktop? With her fingers curled in rings of fire? No one would serve her. The shops keep buckets of water by the door, they know, they know.

Helena shoves three slices of bread into her mouth; her tongue emerges, scoops out half the jar of peanut butter. She says _harmph_ , and then swallows and says “So.” Her tongue lolls out of her mouth, sticky and heavy with peanut butter, and she licks a circle around her mouth before continuing. “Did you practice?”

“No,” Sarah says. “When am I s’posed to? Everyone’s watching, all the time. Not like I could burn down my flat, yeah?”

“If you don’t let it out,” Helena says, “it will eat itself. Fire is hungry, always. It doesn’t care what goes between its teeth as long as there is something to devour.” Fire curls from her markings all the way down her arms, fashions itself into two vague toothy shapes that chase each other in circles. The world’s most dangerous ouroboros, until it burns out.

“I don’t even know what I’m doing,” Sarah mutters, frustrated. “I – I tried, yeah? Just sparks. Wasn’t a bloody – dragon, or whatever that was.” She shakes out her wrists, hands flapping. Sparks fly off the ends, and then – bursts of flame, warm but not too hot in her palms. Then there’s the stab of sheer panic, _someone is going to see someone is going to see someone is_ and the flame snuffs out. Sarah’s heart is a rabbitdrum in her chest.

“You’re afraid,” Helena says. “Afraid that they will see. Afraid that they will know.”

“ _Yeah_ ,” Sarah says, “seeing as I’m not an idiot.” She swallows; her eyes twitch away from Helena. “No – offense, mate.”

Helena shrugs. “I am not afraid,” she says softly. “No matter what they do to me. I am not afraid.”

Fire prowls in circles between Sarah’s ribs. She’s almost too scared to breathe. They watch each other: the fire-touched, and Helena. Helena blinks first.

“I can show you big flames, this time,” she says easily, stepping back so she’s in the middle of the square. “Do you remember how to make little flames? From the time before?”

“Yeah,” Sarah says.

“Show.”

Sarah stares at her hands. They look just like anyone else’s hands – and then she blinks, and they catch fire.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please kudos + comment if you enjoyed! :)


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